9 Creating Communities of Engaged Learners

Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) were initially advertised as a way to extend education to under-served areas.  However, it soon became clear that, for many, MOOCs were simply shadows of credit-based online courses, offered without cost but also without credit.  For some, they also became a business.  And, for many, they became simply a catchall phrase for noncredit work.  True noncredit Continuing Education programming goes well beyond what the public identifies with a MOOC.  Rather than get tangled up in a term that has been misused, let’s start from scratch.

Continuing Education can best use online learning technologies in a noncredit environment by creating online “learning communities”—systems that allow universities to maintain an ongoing engagement with a client group through which multiple learning opportunities can be developed.  Learning Communities should have several key elements:

• The ability for participants to enroll and participate in faculty-led noncredit online courses, research transfer seminars, and training workshops. Some of these may lead to certificates, “continuing education units,” or badges.
• Access to open educational resources (OERs) developed by the host institution to provide specific research-based content that users can apply in their local working/community environment. These may be small training modules, demonstrations of new processes and procedures, backgrounders on regulation, or academic content that members can use to train local staff.  OERs might include video lectures, process demonstrations, computer models, etc.
• A social media environment that allows members to interact informally with each other and with academic experts on local issues as they arise and to share experiences in using OERs and other content acquired from the Learning Community.
• A data bank where ideas, discussions, etc., can be stored for later access.

Each Learning Community should be led by faculty in the sponsoring academic unit and administered by the Continuing Education/Engagement/Extension office.  The institution should assume that the Learning Community’s needs may extend beyond the major discipline around which it is organized; one role of the Continuing Education office, then, would be to help attract other disciplines to the Learning Community when the need arises.  The Continuing Education office would also be in a good position to ensure that successful innovations generated by one Learning Community are shared with others.

Learning Communities could benefit any number of professional groups that are geographically dispersed or that work in different organizations within a community.  Some examples:

• School Teachers
• School Administrators
• Hospital Professionals
• Farmers
• Local Government Professionals, such as Borough Managers, Financial Officers, Police, Firefighters, etc.
• Elected Officials
• Tourism Directors
• Small Business Owners/Operators
• Specialized Professionals
• Leaders in Civic Organizations
• Civic Clubs and Service Organizations
• Librarians

While each Learning Community should have a distinctive set of services and programs, all might operate under a similar business model that would have three major components:

• An annual subscription fee would fund basic operation of the Learning Community. The fee might apply to the organization as a whole or to a subset of its members.  For instance, a school district could join a Learning Community, giving a specific number of teachers access in a given year; in that case the district’s membership might be based on the number of teachers in that district who would have access.
• During the year, the Learning Community would offer a variety of formal noncredit training programs. An individual registration fee would be required of all participants (either paid by the member organization or directly by the participant).
• A Learning Community may choose to charge a subscriber to download OERs.

The goal should be to keep membership fees low, with the understanding that the value of the Learning Community increases with the number of members.

Ideally, each Learning Community would also have an advisory board that would give members a voice in governance and content.

Most institutions involved in Continuing Education/Engagement/Extension have some experience with organizing constituents in order to coordinate services.  In many cases, existing business models could be adjusted to the online environment.

The Learning Community model offers new ways for colleges and universities not only to extend their academic expertise into the community, but to create an ongoing two-way relationship between faculty and their constituencies for research and technology transfer—and to identify new areas for future research and development.